Heart of Gold
by Razzle
Summary: Gozaburo Kaiba makes a heart-wrenching decision motivated by love for his son Noa, defying God himself by attempting to control life and death in order to save him. Not just a cold businessman, he was also a nice person and a caring father.
1. Hit and Run

Chapter 1: Hit and Run

* * *

Author's Note: My main motivation for writing this fanfic is because of the lack of respectful stories about Gozaburo Kaiba. Other villians from other settings are forgiven again and again in fanfiction, as well as some of the other villians of the Yu-Gi-Oh! setting itself - including Marik and Pegasus. Gozaburo, however - for whatever reason, seems to have drawn the short straw.

* * *

"I'm sorry, Noa, but your father is in a very important meeting with the Big 5 right now. He has asked that you play outside and do not bother him until he is through."

"I understand," Noa told the suit formally, carefully masking his disappointment. "Please have Father contact me when he isn't busy."

The suit nodded, then stepped back inside the room and closed the door. With the smallest of sighs, Noa turned and walked away, his step light. _After all,_ he reasoned, _We've still got the whole day ahead of us._

* * *

"That's right," Gozaburo boomed across the table at the Big 5. "I want no mess ups. My company will be in your hands that day. Also, I want not only my favorite yacht, but also a helicopter standing at the ready for my use for the entire day. This is a very special day, as Noa will be turning 12, and I will see what he makes of ten thousand dollars! I want this to be a birthday we both remember when I retire. Oh, and Crump, make sure that the gaming center at the west end of town is reserved. It's Noa's favorite."

"Sure thing, Mr. Kaiba," Crump stated.

"Your company will be in good hands," Gansley said smoothly.

"Of course it will," Gozaburo said, confidently brushing the concern aside. "I want the whole day free to spend with my son."

Outside the large glass windows, the loud squealing of tires on cement carried clearly into the room, followed by a soft cry and a dull thud. Then more squealing tires and the revving of an engine fading into the distance. Gozaburo was on his feet and at the window even before the security alarm started sounding. "No!" Gozaburo screamed, a type of sound that ordinarily did not come from the confident, brutal CEO. "Oh, God, if there is one, NO! Noa!"

The Big 5 sat, frozen in their seats, as Gozaburo dashed out of the room and ran outside.

By the time Gozaburo reached Noa's side, the Kaibacorp Emergency Response Medical Team was already gathered around the child. Breathing hard and ignoring the squeezing feeling in his chest, Gozaburo dropped to his hands and knees next to his son.

Noa's chest was crushed and bleeding from the impact, and his head was bruised and gashed from hitting the crisp white cement of the enormous corporate front drive. One arm was obviously broken, and both legs were badly scraped, but Gozaburo saw his son breathe, if shallowly.

"I'm sorry sir," the medic in charge was saying. "But it doesn't look good. Well, what I mean to say, sir, is that these wounds are fatal."

Gozaburo rounded on the man, grabbing him by the front of the shirt. "Don't tell me that! My son is still alive, and we are going to keep him that way! Do you hear me? I will NOT let him die!"

"But Mr. Kaiba!" the medic protested, his face white as a sheet. "Surely you don't mean-!"

"I do," Gozaburo growled, shaking the frightened man. "Now don't just sit there while my son dies! My mind is made up. Do the procedure!"

The Kaibacorp Emergency Response Medical Team rushed to obey, and Gozaburo Kaiba, multi-billionaire and ruthless CEO of the Kaiba Coporation, gave himself over to tears.


	2. Cheating Death

Chapter 2: Cheating Death

* * *

Author's Note: Dialogue between Noa and Gozaburo in this chapter and the next are taken from the Yu-Gi-Oh! English dub. I included it for canon consistency, but the focus here is supposed to be on what I've written _around_ it from Gozaburo's perspective. I'm trying to show the scenes from his POV, to better express how I see him as a parent and how the events in canon affected him.

* * *

4 hours and 51 minutes later, Gozaburo stood, waiting and watching the holo-viewscreen.

"Please remember, Mr. Kaiba, our experiments weren't complete yet," the nervous scientist operating the controls told him. "We have no way to _know_ this will work."

"Shut up!" Gozaburo snapped. "I know that! Do you think I'm a fool? Just do as you're told. If you had a child, you would understand."

Apparently too intimidated to answer, the scientist obeyed. The viewscreen stayed dark, but Noa's voice floated out of the speakers, in pieces at first and then more consistently as the connection was made. "...sleeping for days! ... in the hospital... a dream! Father!"

"I'm right here, Noa! Noa, it's your father speaking to you," Gozaburo called back loudly, facing the dark screen.

There was a pause, then Noa's voice came again, breaking his father's heart. "Hey... what's going on? I'm locked in... Father? Hello? Are you there?" Obviously, Gozaburo's son could not hear him, and believed he was all alone.

"What are you doing?" Gozaburo snapped at the scientist, every fatherly instinct driving him to deep anger and helplessness at his child's pain. "Get that screen on!"

"Right away, sir!" the scientist replied, desperately pressing buttons. Finally, the viewscreen lit up, showing a view of Noa in a virtual copy of his bedroom.

"Huh? What's that?" he asked, turning from the door. Seeing his father standing there, he ran excitedly to him. "Father! I had the weirdest dream! I was in a hospital and everyone was really worried and-"

Gozaburo just shook his head, cutting his son off. As much as he hated to destroy Noa's false hopes, at the same time he had always believed the truth was best from the start - no matter how brutal for them both.

At Noa's innocently quizzical noise, Gozaburo squeezed his eyes shut in pain and forced himself to explain. "I'm afraid it WASN'T a dream, Noa. There was... an accident. And you were in bad shape. Your body's gone." How did you tell your own child something like that? Gozaburo wished it HAD been just a dream; but wishes were pointless folly. He needed to deal with the reality of the situation, and so did Noa.

Noa's eyes widened in shock, and he gasped. "But how?!"

Gozaburo put his hands on the screen, wishing he could hold his son comfortingly in his arms. Although he had not done so very often while he had the chance, he ached to do so now. "My team of scientists and researchers tried to save you," he said, his hands sliding down the face of the screen an inch or two in despair as he continued, "but nothing they did would help, so I turned to my tech experts and computer engineers, and they found a solution."

Noa dropped to kneel on the floor of his virtual room. "W-what do you mean?" he asked, his voice shaking in fear and confusion.

"You'll understand in time," Gozaburo told him gently, trying to ignore and mask his own pain, as the virtual dog he had ordered to be programmed came up from behind Noa and gave two short yaps. As Noa turned to the small dog in surprise, Gozaburo explained, "I've created this dog for you, son. You and he exist in a different way than the rest of us."

Noa hugged the dog as his father finished speaking, clinging to that bit of comfort like a drowning man to a liferaft.

_What have I done?_ Gozaburo wondered, the reality of his son's separation from the rest of humanity, and from himself, hitting home. _What I had to do,_ he resolved. _I saved my child's life._

* * *

Gansley smiled smugly to himself as he leaned back in his overlage office chair, reflecting on poor young Noa Kaiba's recent funeral. _With the CEO so distraught and distracted over the death of his son, he's making it all too easy for the five of us to begin to subtly grasp power. Under my direction, of course, we shall soon own Kaibacorp. And I've paid off that driver more than enough to live out a happy, early retirement for the rest of his days - very, very far away from here. I am sure that investment will prove to be a good one._


	3. Too Painful to Watch

Chapter 3: Too Painful to Watch

As Gozaburo watched his virtual son, still dressed in his space suit, blowing out the candles on his virtual cake, it nagged at him not for the first time that Noa hadn't aged at all. He should have been graduating from college by now, but he still looked and acted like a twelve-year-old child. "Hmmph," he muttered under his breath. His _company_ had matured more than his son had.

"Hold on a sec!" Noa beamed suddenly, turning to his father. "We can't celebrate without Sam."

"What on earth is that?!" Gozaburo demanded, looking at the holo-viewscreen in a sort of horrified shock. The dog he had had programmed for Noa had appeared, and it gave a couple of coldly metallic yaps. It was either wearing a metal mask or it had a metal robot head now - it was hard for Gozaburo to tell. Finally, the CEO found his voice. "Noa? Explain!"

Noa did so, hesitantly at first, but obviously proud. "Well... I just altered its programming." He paused long enough to pick up Sam. "I got bored, so I decided to re-engineer Sam into a robot dog!"

Gozaburo made a disgruntled noise in his throat. He had had that virtual dog created to give his poor son some measure of comfort, something soft and loving in his isolated computer environment - and now, out of mere boredom Noa had turned it into a mechanical abomination instead? And what was this about Noa altering the programming of something in his virtual world? How had he gained access to the computer systems to do that in the first place, and just how much control did he have? What if he altered his _own_ program next? Would whatever made Gozaburo's son truly 'Noa' be lost forever - or had it been already? Gozaburo had had Noa's thoughts, memories, and personality downloaded into the computer, but... could this child who wouldn't grow up still even be considered human, or was he simply a recording of what had been?

"And that's not all!" Noa went on excitedly, not seeming to notice his father's discomfort. "I've been working on a few other projects that you might be interested in. I figured out how to improve the capabilities of the virtual world you created for me." The screen changed to show an image of the earth with red networking lines going around the globe. Numbers changed rapidly in the bottom right corner of the display as Noa spoke. "All we have to do is connect OUR computer network to OTHER systems all around the world!"

"I see!" Gozaburo said impatiently. "And you thought of this little plan all by yourself? I must say, for the first time I'm impressed." _Congratulations, Noa,_ he thought in bitter sarcasm, realizing just how out-of-date his son had gotten to be, isolated as he had been over the years. _You've just invented the internet._

"You'd be surprised how much I've learned," Noa said proudly, obviously not picking up on his father's lack of enthusiasm - or perhaps trying to make up for it.

"Yes, I can see you've come a long way," Gozaburo replied simply, keeping his critical thoughts private.

At even that insincere praise from his father, Noa's eyes gleamed. "So you think I have what it takes to run Kaibacorp someday?"

Uncertain how to answer that, Gozaburo just gave an indescernible grumble and cleared his throat. Years ago, before the accident that had changed everything, Gozaburo had always answered that innocent question in the affirmative with an inward feeling of fatherly pride. But Noa couldn't possibly expect now to run a company from inside a virtual computer program, could he? A CEO needed to be able to keep his eyes on everything and every_one_ at all times. That would be nearly impossible to do from Noa's virtual... prison. Gozaburo realized that was true of most things - marriage, children of Noa's own, and other things the real world had to offer were now out of the question. Perhaps it was for the best, after all, that Noa hadn't matured and grown to desire those things. He would never even realize a lot of what he was missing.

"Is that a yes?" Noa asked eagerly, drawing his father's thoughts back to their discussion. "Even you have to admit this virtual existence has done wonders for my intellect, Father! I'm the perfect candidate to take over this company!"

It was too much. Gozaburo turned and left quickly, hands clasped behind his back. "Let's uh... discuss this further... sometime in the near future." Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered; would his son - or this recording of his son - even know or care what the 'near future' meant? Did time even hold any meaning for him any longer?

Did anything, really, for that matter? It was too disturbing a thought for any parent to contemplate. So, in his pain, Gozaburo did his best from that time forward to banish Noa from his thoughts whenever possible. He had a new son, now, to follow in his footsteps and eventually inherit Kaibacorp. Even if he wasn't Gozaburo's own flesh and blood, at least young Seto was MADE of flesh and blood. He was disobedient at times, true, but also crafty and intelligent like Gozaburo himself. He just needed a firm hand.


End file.
